


Belly, Edge, Guard

by boo_cool_robot



Category: Marvel 616, X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Danger Room, F/M, Gen, Knife fighting, Sexual Tension, Sparring, scott submits to the mortifying ordeal of being known in order to reap the rewards of knife fighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 08:21:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26848840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boo_cool_robot/pseuds/boo_cool_robot
Summary: Of all the X-Men, Ororo is the one who’s fighting style feels the most familiar to his own, even as she’s clearly more graceful. She darts agilely, watches for an advantage, always preparing to end the fight as soon as she can with the leverage she’s gathered. It’s the style of someone who’s used to getting in fights with people bigger than them.Ororo gives Scott a taste of knife fighting.
Relationships: Ororo Munroe/Scott Summers
Kudos: 20





	Belly, Edge, Guard

**Author's Note:**

> I have been possessed by the thought of Ororo sexily teaching Scott to knife fight, and dismayed that this doesn't already exist, so I dashed this out.
> 
> Loosely takes place in Claremont era, earlier in Scott and Ororo's friendship. As usual, my Scott is trans here, though it doesn't come up much. And also they're both bi!
> 
> I am absolutely not a knife fighter and gleaned most of it from Youtube videos, with this one featuring martial artist Logan Lo heavily informing this fic.

“Can you teach me that?”

Ororo had pinned some minor vampire to the wall with his own ornate knife in between sending hail at a foe approaching Kitty’s back and elbowing a third person with a well-placed strike to the vampiric solar plexus, and Scott had just blurted it out from where he was crouched beside the pipe organ, sending out an occasional optic blast when the angles were right.

“Of course, my friend,” she had said as she drew another knife out of an approaching enemy’s belt, “As soon as we’re finished here.” And she had shepherded Scott along to the Danger Room as soon as they’d gotten back to the mansion, Scott carried along in the momentum of a successful mission. 

“You know how to disarm someone with a knife?” Ororo asks as they both jog around the Danger Room’s gym equipment in their warm-up.

“Of course. All the X-Men have been trained in basic disarms.” He had been well-practiced since way before the X-Men, had learned well that disarming an enemy was a good way to bring them down to size. Even a kick from a thirteen-year-old, if unexpected, could send a knife flying, and make a fight slightly more winnable in a safer way than unleashing his optic blasts. 

“You know that once you disarm your foe, it’s safest to kick the weapon away and make distance. Do not attempt to use their knife against them unless you are very well-experienced.” 

“Like you,” Scott smiles. It’s not a question.

“Like me,” Ororo confirms. She handily clears a hurdle. 

“Like me, one day.” He realizes that it sounds like a boast just a moment too late, but Ororo understands what he means.

“I have no doubt in your dedication to practice, Scott, and thus, I have no doubt that you will summit that peak one day.” She claps her hands together and stops jogging, motions that he should also step into the open space at the center of this Danger Room configuration. “Today, let’s start with a round of sparring then, no powers. Just to give you a taste.”

Ororo pulls a pair of knives from her boot, startling Scott and making her smile. They both know his mental catalogue of all the weapons in the room is usually more complete than that. She holds one out to him, handle first. “These have blunted blades. They won’t cut, but it will hurt to be struck by one. That will make you react more realistically than if we used rubber or wooden knives.” 

He nods, tests the weight of it in his hand and catalogues the knife’s curve. Belly, edge, guard--a simpler weapon than any body could be. Scott tightens his fingers on the wooden grip. He decides not to risk trying to toss and catch it. 

“May I?” Ororo folds her hand over Scott’s at his nod. A spark of what he thinks is static electricity shocks him at her touch. He has always quietly wondered if she carries lightning within her all the time, if it’s harder to draw on that power or to prevent it from leaking out of her fingertips. He doesn’t ask. 

She gently unfurls his fingers from the handle and reverses the knife within his grip, having him hold the knife like he would a wrench . “You’ll create less force this way, but have a longer reach.” She demonstrates by straightening his elbow and tugging his hand toward her as she steps back. Scott immediately sees that she’s right, the blade able to touch her neck. He draws back into a ready stance.

Ororo looks him up and down, nods. “Your natural stance is very good. Continue to lead with the foot on the side you hold your knife in. And remember: you hold in your hand a deadly weapon.” She goes into her own ready stance and tosses and catches her knife, easy as anything, grins. 

Scott thinks, suddenly, that he should offer to let her take his motorcycle on a ride someday. It isn’t anywhere near flying, but he thinks she would enjoy the wind in her face, the woods blurring around her.

They begin to dance around each other, feet darting forward and back on the Danger Room floor. Their knife tips circle slowly in the air in front of them, slow patterns broken by an occasional flick forward, always matched by a dodge back by the other. Scott darts his gaze from her clever hands to her searching eyes, listening for the slightest shift in breath to indicate where he might attack. 

Of all the X-Men, Ororo is the one who’s fighting style feels the most familiar to his own, even as she’s clearly more graceful. She darts agilely, watches for an advantage, always preparing to end the fight as soon as she can with the leverage she’s gathered. It’s the style of someone who’s used to getting in fights with people bigger than them. He knows he fights the same way, some corner of his lizard brain still thinking of himself as a scrappy little kid instead of the significantly larger guy he became after the Professor took him in, started feeding him regular meals, and let him start on testosterone. He thinks that Ororo must understand that feeling when she stares down another enemy of mutants. Perhaps she feels some echo of it now, as she breaks her eyes from his and shifts her weight. 

At that, Scott slashes forward with his knife, but she’s ready for him the way that he’s been ready for her, never having taken her eyes off of him. She darts to the side, then slashes at his wrist in an overhand blow he barely twists to avoid. Scott donkey-kicks at her other side, trying to use his height advantage to make distance between them. She dodges that too, but Scott uses the split second to scramble back. They return to circling each other.

Normally, Scott would be trying to unbalance his opponent with some strategic banter. A few sharp words was more than enough to rile up the like of Wolverine, sometimes even without him even intending to. With Ororo, however, he’s reasonably sure that won’t work. 

“I would not teach this to anyone who asked,” Ororo murmurs suddenly. She doesn’t stop circling, her feet dancing next to his, so Scott doesn’t stop either. “I would not arm someone with the means to do violence to their fellows unless I believed that they would use their power only for what is necessary.” 

“Well.” Scott slowly spools out his words, drawing a strand of his attention to the conversation. “I’ll try not to go after anyone,” and Ororo’s knife tip circles, “that isn’t going after someone else.” He carefully grasps his words, his body, his knife, this match, and his eyes--always his eyes. 

He knows control. He cannot promise her that he will always be in control of every weapon and every fight, but he can swear to try his best. 

“You’re a good man, Scott Summers,” and she smiles, brilliant. “I know you would not hurt anyone if it was not necessary.” 

“Oh, uh, thanks,” he mumbles. His words catch in his chest at that, something in the way she looks at him too much, and he redirects his energy into a thrust forward, at the edge of his reach.

She parries it aside with a sharp strike to his forearm, the dulled metal scoring a bruise into his flesh. His weight hangs off-center from his forward momentum, and he knows in that moment, as she guides his wrist into her hand with her blade, that he has lost.

Unlike Ororo, who effortlessly makes eloquence flow from her tongue every time she looks at the smallest flower, Scott is not a man of poetic expression. All the awkward metaphors he keeps stuffed inside his chest are about destruction. His body is a faulty weapon. His eyes are burning through his head. Et cetera. His primary language has become that of military movements and precision blows. He’s put long hours into finding the right angle to strike from to make a body crumple. 

But as Ororo sweeps him off his feet and twists his arm just enough to make the knife fall from his fingers that open despite himself, he thinks that what she does feels like making his body bloom. 

She catches him before he can fall on his knife, blunted though it is, and kicks it far out of his reach. His arms are neatly pinned behind his back, Ororo’s knife held to his throat, promising another ache if he moves. Scott feels the heat of her skin at his back, her finely honed skill focused on keeping him pinned. Her breath brushes against the back of his sweat-dampened neck, making him suppress a shiver. He is accustomed to the trading of blows in rounds of sparring--too many rounds, his team had groused at him time and time again. He knows the feeling of delivering a hit against a friend’s skin and then offering a hand to help them up again, knows how it feels from the other end to clasp a sparring partner’s hand from the ground. The way Ororo holds him now, the energy of the fight still humming between them, stretches into a different kind of intimacy. Like he is the lightning that she urges to blossom from her hands.

“I--I yield,” Scott says, slackening in her grip. He thinks he has been silent too long. 

“You did wonderfully,” she murmurs into his ear. “You’ll do wonderfully.” And she lets him go, the air against his back where she was standing a moment ago shocking in its coolness. 

Being released from her hold does nothing to quell the fire in his head. He stands from his forced crouch when he feels like he really wants to jump. Like he could stretch up and soar to meet that part of her that lives in the sky. 

Ororo watches him, and a spark jumps from her braids when she jerks her chin at him in an approving nod, royal and rival both in her stance.

“Again?” Scott asks. He can feel a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. 

“Always,” she responds. She matches his grin with her own. 

Scott goes in, ready to meet her.

**Author's Note:**

> Love to write some dramatic irony about a future ideological divorce.....Perhaps one day I will write out some Scott/Ororo miserable post AvX fic. 
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading! Catch me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/boo_cool_robot) or [Tumblr](https://soundingonlyatnightasyousleep.tumblr.com/), where I overthink X-Men and lovingly dunk on my boy Scott.


End file.
